How to write Sindarin and Quenya in Cirth?

According to the appendix, Cirth was originally invented to write Sindarin. Yet the table doen t seem to provide all the sounds that occur in Sindarin, such as

Message 1 of 6
, Dec 25, 2006

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According to the appendix, Cirth was originally invented to write
Sindarin. Yet the table doen't seem to provide all the sounds that
occur in Sindarin, such as the vowel 'y' or the dipthongs. What all the
values of these sounds? And is it possible write Quenya in Cirth?

elfiness

... What do you mean? What sounds? I think they are all there. Y is number 45 And yes, some sounds exist in Quenya, I guess that usage was used in Eregion

>
> According to the appendix, Cirth was originally invented to write
> Sindarin. Yet the table doen't seem to provide all the sounds that
> occur in Sindarin, such as the vowel 'y' or the dipthongs. What all the
> values of these sounds? And is it possible write Quenya in Cirth?
>

What do you mean? What sounds? I think they are all there. Y is number 45

And yes, some sounds exist in Quenya, I guess that usage was used in
Eregion

Melroch 'Aestan

... How to write Sindarin is really no mystery if you read Appendix E carefully. Only remember that what is usually transcribed _ch_ in Sindarin is transcribed

Message 3 of 6
, Dec 28, 2006

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i_aran_elenion skrev:

> According to the appendix, Cirth was originally invented
> to write Sindarin. Yet the table doen't seem to provide
> all the sounds that occur in Sindarin, such as the vowel
> 'y' or the dipthongs.

How to write Sindarin is really no mystery if you read
Appendix E carefully. Only remember that what is usually
transcribed _ch_ in Sindarin is transcribed _kh_, in the
Cirth chart, that _n_ is certh #12 and _ng_ is certh #22 --
i.e. generally where there are two values separated by a
dash the one to the left is the older, 'Elvish' one, to
be used when writing Sindarin. As for _y_ it is
obviously certh
#45: _ü_ is merely the German way of writing the vowel [y],
and Tolkien choose it because elswhere in the chart he used
_y_ for a consonant, as in English _year_ or Quenya _yén_.
Also the long vowels are usually written with an acute or
circumflex -- e.g. _ú, û_ --, but in the chart they are
marked with the more 'scientific' macron -- a horizontal
line above the vowel letter -- e.g. certh #43 corresponds to
_ú, û_. There is no sign for long _í/î_ in the chart;
presumably it was written with certh #39 doubled -- e.g.
_chîn_ = {20-39-39-12}. Last but not least _h_ (outside the
digraphs _ch, dh, (gh, mh,) ph, th_) is written with any of
cirth #13, #15 or #54 in Sindarin, and _ss_ is presumably
certh #36.

> What all the values of these sounds? And is it possible
> write Quenya in Cirth?

Of course it is; that's what the additions by the Noldor of
Eregion were intended for, after all! The problem is that we
can't be absolutely sure about the values, since the values
in the chart in Appendix E are oriented towards Sindarin and
Westron (the latter in practice meaning English). The main
problem is how the Quenya palatals _ty (ndy,) ny, ry, ly, y,
hy_ were written. My hopefully educated guess is that the
cirth #13-17 were used, namely:

#13. ty
#14. (ndy) -- e.g. the archaic spelling _Quendya_
#15. hy
#16. y -- it clearly can't be certh #40 since that is marked
as a Dwarvish addition, nor certh #39, since
there are potential minimal pairs with _ye_ vs.
_ie_ in Quenya, e.g. _ #valye_ vs. _Valie_.
#17. ny -- there is an unpublished longer version of
Appendix E which confirms that #17 could be
used for _ny_.

Cf. what is said about the equivalence between Westron _ch_
and Quenya _ty_, Westron _sh_ and Quenya _hy_ in the
"Pronunciation of Words and Names" at the beginning of
Appendix E (under the letters TY and Y respectively.)

Then only remains the question of how to write _ry_ and
_ly_: at least it is probably not wrong to write {29-16} and
{31-16}. This may be compared to the fact that the names of
the tengwar imply that _hy_ and _y_ originally had their own
tengwar, while everything points to _ny, ry_ and _ly_ always
being expressed with a diacritic.

The rules for _h, s, ss_ are presumably the same as in
Sindarin.

Probably Quenya _s_ of different origin would be written
with two different cirth #34/35 vs. #10, and _n_ of
different origin with cirth #12 or #22, just as in Tengwar
spelling, but OTOH Tolkien frequently flouted this rule when
writing Quenya with Tengwar.

Since there is no real need to distinguish between _ñ_
(certh #22) and _ñg_ (certh #33) in Quenya or Sindarin I'm
often tempted to use certh #33 for _ld_ analogous to Tengwar
usage, but there is of course not even a hint that Tolkien
might have done that!
--

"I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody
is altogether on my side" -- Fangorn

i_aran_elenion

Thanks, Melroch. A few questions. So. The diphthongs. They are written as in they are written in alphabet, seperately, unlike in tengwar mode in which they use

Message 4 of 6
, Dec 28, 2006

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Thanks, Melroch. A few questions.
So. The diphthongs. They are written as in they are written in
alphabet, seperately, unlike in tengwar mode in which they use
distinct letters?
And what do the dots beneath the cirth 7.22.38.52,33 symbolize? Are
they part of the cirth? (Crith 38 and 52 particularly adds my
confusion, in which two cirths seem to exist for one value)

Melroch 'Aestan

... Yes probably. In the Book of Mazarbul facsimile there are a number of extra cirth for English vowel digraphs, but I wouldn t venture into using them for

Message 5 of 6
, Dec 28, 2006

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i_aran_elenion skrev:

> Thanks, Melroch. A few questions. So. The diphthongs. They
> are written as in they are written in alphabet,
> seperately, unlike in tengwar mode in which they use
> distinct letters?

Yes probably. In the Book of Mazarbul facsimile there are a
number of extra cirth for English vowel digraphs, but I
wouldn't venture into using them for Sindarin or Quenya
vowels, but just write _ae_ {48-46}, _ai_ {48-39} _au_ {48-
42} and so on.

> And what do the dots beneath the cirth 7.22.38.52,33
> symbolize? Are they part of the cirth?

No, they are not part of the cirth, but serve to subdivide
the table into groups similar to the columns and the
horizontal line in the Tengwar table. This is an old source
of confusion; apparently this isn't as obvious as Tolkien
thought if you don't know phonetics.

> (Crith 38 and 52 particularly adds my confusion, in which
> two cirths seem to exist for one value)

Yes, they are just variants of a single certh, although in
the Book of Mazarbul facsimile the two variants of certh #38
are used for _ou_ and _nj_ respectively for writing English.

This is a Frequently Encountered Misunderstanding due to the
rather different way English and Sindarin form plurals!

You mentioned in your answer to elfiness that:

> As for no.45. I never imagined it would be used for the
> vowel 'y' because it had a u with diaresis.

The German _Umlaut_ and the Greek-derived _diaeresis_
unfortunately look the same -- two dots above -- in modern
fonts, but they are different in origin:

1. the diaeresis was always two dots, and is used to
indicate that two consecutive vowel letters are to be
pronounced separately, or (as in Tolkien's Roman spelling
of Quenya) that a vowel which should normally be silent
according to English reading rules should be pronounced.

2. the umlaut (which literally means 'sound shift') was
originally a tiny _e_ written atop a back vowel _a, o_ or
_u_ to indicate that it should be pronounced as a front
vowel. These sounds don't exist in modern English, and
neither did they in Westron, where Sindarin _y_ was
pronounced the same as _i_. I don't know why German
printers started to use a diaeresis as umlaut -- perhaps
because they used French-produced lead type where the
proper signs were missing. Anyway the use of the double
dot to indicate a change in pronunciation is found in
several European languages beside German, and got adopted
from there by 19th century historical linguists. Tolkien
of course was a spiritual descendant of them, and was
seemingly untroubled about using the double dot above for
two different purposes.